Guatemala still making payments to survivors of its civil war

We don’t read or hear much about Guatemala anymore. At one time, that government’s brutal civil war against leftists and its own Mayan population filled newspaper reports. Guatemalan refugees then sought sanctuary in U.S. churches, as they defied U.S. government officials pressuring their humanitarian efforts.

Little arrives in the way of Guatemalan news anymore, especially as major mainstream papers have closed Latin America bureaus, reporting ranks have been reduced and those left are now based in new trouble spots.

The Washington Post follows up today with news of the reparation that hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans have received since the war ended. One man’s simple response says so much about these payments.

“You can’t pay for a life,” Francisco Velasco said. “But it is a gesture of support.” The man’s family has received $5,400 in the deaths of his wife and two daughters and 13 other relatives killed in “the army’s scorched-earth campaign.”

“Since President Alvaro Colom took office in January 2008, Guatemala has stepped up payments to survivors of the estimated 200,000 people who died in the 36-year civil war. Begun in 2003, the program had compensated 3,000 survivors by 2007, according to its directors. But under Colom, whose family suffered a high-profile death during the war, the state has handed out 10,477 checks – many for claims ignored for years.”